(HOST) The recent revival of the Drinking Age debate in Montpelier got commentator Deborah Luskin thinking about where, when and how we can teach our children how to drink responsibly.
(LUSKIN) In my home, wine is part of tablecloth occasions – meals attached to a celebration, such as the Sabbath, Thanksgiving, a homecoming or company.
On religious holidays, we bless the wine in Hebrew; on secular occasions, we make a toast. Sometimes we toast wine, other times it’s scotch or bourbon or beer. But no matter the occasion or the beverage, we always drink with reverence.
I learned how to drink from my parents, who would let us kids taste their cocktails. As a child, I thought a martini was akin to gasoline. My father simply said I hadn’t suffered enough to appreciate an elixir so fine. Now I know what he means; now I think a dry, gin martini is pretty close to divine. My kids, on the other hand, don’t understand why I would sip something that tastes so awful it ought to require a doctor’s prescription. I tell them, "You haven’t suffered enough." Just as alcoholism is often passed from one generation to another, responsible drinking can also be an inherited trait – or at least a learned one, if parents make the effort to teach it.
When my kids were little, I served them sweet cider in stemmed glasses on those special occasions when we grown-ups enjoyed a before dinner cocktail. I wanted them to participate in the social ritual of conversation and social drinking. I wanted them to learn to drink responsibly, in moderation, and not drink just to get drunk.
I also wanted my children to learn how to drink at home, from me, and not in a moving vehicle operated by a teen experimenting with alcohol. I wanted my kids to be familiar with alcohol, so that when they turned 21 it wouldn’t be a mysterious Big Deal.
I think it’s unreasonable to expect teens to abstain from alcohol until they are 21, and then for them suddenly to become responsible users without prior, supervised, experience. But children learn what they see, and often what they see is irresponsible adult behavior around alcohol. We can stand aside with our arms folded in disapproval as our teenagers cruise the back roads chugging and tossing beer cans out the window, and we can "tsk" our disapproval at the binge drinking that is now campus ritual in college, but we could do a lot more.
First, we can show our kids how to have fun without any alcohol at all. Next, we can teach our kids by example not to drink and drive – by never drinking and driving ourselves. And finally, we can teach our children how to drink responsibly. One way to do this is to introduce them to wine as part of a family meal, or a beer as a preamble to one.
And I think we need to start this process while they’re young. We insist that our teenagers take supervised driving lessons before we hand them the keys to the family car. We should do no less when it comes to learning to drink.